Reader Rendezvous at Our House

I'd been preparing for them all summer, the Bird Watcher's Digest Reader Rendezvous' that would take place on two consecutive weekends only ten days after the American Birding Expo, also hosted by Bird Watcher's Digest.  Why, you ask, were there two in a row? Because more people wanted to come than they could accomodate in one. 

There's something about knowing that 75 subscribers are going to be walking through your yard and house and using your bathrooms that ignites a special sort of...preparedness... in a houseproud person. After the ACKing, I got busy. Coughed up a few grand to renovate that crumbling ca. 1978 upstairs bathroom this summer. The one I'd tried and failed to dress up with sponge painting. Not that it was time...

Bill bought deadly chemicals to try to take the lime scale off the glass in the downstairs bath. I threw out approximately 2.5 tons of unneeded paper in my studio.  Again, wasn't really necessary, but a good thing to have an excuse to do. 

Bill replaced some boards, and painted the rest of the skeezy deck boards with a rubbery brown paint that made them look like new-ish. 

He fixed this and that and got all the cobwebs out of the corners, mowed paths in the meadow...

We finally made a crop netting cover for the deadly kitchen window, and the day before the second Rendezvous, Liam and I put a ladder up and climbed on the roof to apply American Bird Conservancy reflective tape to the little clerestory windows that the cardinals loved to kill themselves on. All those things that we'd been trying to get to, and now had a deadline for. It was good.

I weeded the gardens as if 75 subscribers were going to be tut-tutting over my slothfulness should they spot crabgrass. Which they wouldn't, but still.

I planted flowers that would still, I prayed, be colorful in October. Lots in large planters so I could keep them out of the rabbits' jaws.

Got bold and planted some Trandshen Bonstedt fuchsias in the ground, and the bunnies left them alone! Amazing! I had gone a little crazy propagating them in the greenhouse over the winter, and had some to spare.

I know they made it because the rabbits don't like them, as they mowed my geraniums and lobelias planted right beside the fuchsias down to stubs. Filing that away for future reference...Trandshen Bonstedt fuchsia works! and it makes a 4' tower of pendant pink blossoms all summer long. Hummingbirds like it. They prefer Fuchsia Gartenmeister Bonstedt, however.  (see top photo).

I watered the gardens with slow hoses every few days through the terrible drought of September. 

Imagine if someone said, "We're going to have a garden tour at your house in the second week of October!" Yeah. That. Whose garden looks fantastic in October? 

OK.  Let's do some late-blooming annuals... zinnias and salvia and my fabulous fuchsias...begonias and Achimenes and calendulas and morning glories...we can do this. We got this! It was fun, planning for October bloom. I got to grow a bunch of colorful tropical annuals, and the hummingbirds loved it. 

Oh, and I forgot the main ingredient: three Subaru loads of rotted cow manure. Hee hee hee!

The bonsais were beginning to color up and looked very beautiful.  This one is loving its new planter; it finally grew out of the shallow pot.

They are getting so big (waist high to me) that they're a real challenge to keep watered. I think I'll bump the two in the foreground up to planters for next spring. They're telling me they're feeling crowded and stressed. Mmmhmm. I hear you, dear maples. You look awesome in your little flat pots, but if you're unhappy, it's time to make a change.

So thrilled to have Callicarpa (Beautyberry) fruiting in the yard, thanks to my friend Jen! This native shrub makes the most fabulous purple bluebird bait.

The birches lost almost all their leaves in the drought, so we won't have golden birchlight this year. Nothing I can do about that. Hibiscus "The Path" tries to make up for it.

Geraniums "Happy Thought Red" and "Vesuvius" doin' their thing. These are e-nor-mous plants, and I'm afraid they're not going to be coming in the greenhouse again. 

Nope. I have made understudies. Though I did adore having this huge Happy Thought inside all last winter.  Who doesn't need a huge happy thought? 

Durn Salvia guaranitica "Black and Blue" waited until now to bloom. Why. Why. 

The light this time of year...oh my. See that tent in the front yard? That reminds me that I was writing about Reader Rendezvous'.

Our dear friend Ann from North Dakota came to participate, and to help. As she and I were working in the kitchen, I asked her what percentage of her came to participate, and what percentage came to help. And in my head, I'd come up with 60% help, 40% participate. 

"Oh, about 60% help," she answered, and I gave her a giant hug.

Because that's what dear friends do. They help. We are modeling our Heart and Hand pendants from Scattered Light Jewelry. It is not a coinkydink that we both have one. :) They're really cool. The little heart swings with the hand just above it, moving in concert. Intelligent jewelry. Click the link, check it out.

I would need my sweet friend near this weekend. This is the Saturday night crowd. I provided entertainment in the form of a Keynote talk, and Bill and I played some Rain Crows songs too. Wonderful people!! so warm and engaged. An honor to know them.

 I got up to take this photo of everyone enjoying a delicious catered meal, because I was inwardly freaking out that I would be serving lunch to them the very next day. 

It's probably just as well that I went through the summer cleaning the house, throwing stuff out, and preening and watering the gardens, all the while gaily assuming that a caterer had been engaged for the 59 people gathering at our house on October 2, and 32 coming for lunch on October 9. Five days before the first event, I asked who was catering the midday meal on Sunday, and found out otherwise. By then, it was too late to hire anyone in. The BWD staff was completely tied up with field trips and guiding. I was reeling, fresh off showing my art at the American Birding Expo, which I did fresh off returning from South Africa, but at the same time I couldn't bear the thought that anyone would leave our place hungry on the last day of the four day event. It was time to get to work. 

I picked the garden absolutely clean of Sungold tomatoes, tomatillos, sweet peppers and herbs. Sauteed them up with onions, and made the summer-soaked flavor stuffings for ten Summer Quiches. Made two vats of curried butternut/acorn squash soup. Made four enormous vats of chili, with a total of 15 pounds of ground hamburger and Italian sausage in 'em. I was still worried I wouldn't have enough. I'd never cooked for 59 at once before. As it turned out, the food simply vanished as soon as we put it out, but everyone got enough.  And I was very proud to know it had been wholesome and good.

Something my staunch Iowa aunts wouldn't think twice of doing turned out to be an enormously big deal for me. As I cooked, while scrounging up every piece of silverware and glassware in the house and basement, I thought about them, my aunts Melba and Donna and Marjorie and my grandmothers Frieda and Elnora. I thought about the fact that such gatherings turn out to be almost all about the food for them, and for everyone else, too. Food is life. Food is love, food is necessary and it is front and center. It is the table on which everything else is set. I was filled with gratitude for all the meals they'd served when the Zickefooses and Ruighs would get together in the summers, often in honor of we outliers, we East Coasters coming out to Iowa for our yearly visit, and I felt very small and insignificant as I finally, viscerally understood the service they'd provided. And all without batting an eye. 

 My beautiful friend Harma from Sarasota reconnects with little Chet Baker.

Sofia remembers my necklace from the Expo, and pops it into her little gob again.

I get a much-needed squeeze from my friend Dick from Colorado, in my studio. Imagine that! We're both delighted he's here. He's been to the New River Birding and Nature Festival a couple times; to the Reader Rendezvous ("Birding Valhalla with JZ") at North Bend. We go back.

A couple walks through our meadow, glowing with goldenrod, the sumac just kindling.

Hugs in front of the tent (which is full of happy grazers)

Relaxing in the sunshine.

A big HALOO to the photographers in the tower!

And Zick homecooking in every belly. I'm proud of that. I have never aspired to be a caterer, but it's nice to know what can be done when push comes to shove.

And the frost held off, and the flowers bloomed on

and the next weekend, we'd do it all over again.

Deer Magic

This morning on the way to the boat launch for our pontoon ride, Paco and I saw some sweet scenes. 

The deer at North Bend aren't hunted, and they people the landscape in the most fearless way. 

Nothing says Eden quite like morning mist and four bucks in velvet, ignoring you.

Looking up to see what you're doing, then turning away without concern, standing belly-brush deep in sweet vernal grass.  

We spotted this gorgeous buck stripping grape leaves as high as he could reach.

Which was pretty high when he got up on his hinders, gerenuk style. 

If I remember correctly, Paco told me this is a three-year-old, judging by the spread of his antlers and the slope of his forehead. He said a buck's forehead gets less scooped in and more Roman-nosed as he ages, and I've noted that myself, without really knowing it.

I so enjoy talking with people who know natural history, know animals, know the woods. I always laugh when people apologize to me for being hunters. (Paco knows he doesn't have to). What a silly and boring world it would be if non-hunters only talked to non-hunters, animal lovers only talked to other animal lovers, hunters only talked to other hunters. So to avoid being silly and boring, I like to cross those lines as often as possible.

For my part, I simply marvel that there is an animal this big, this beautiful, this wild, that chooses to walk amongst us, to give us a long look and then go on stripping grape leaves off the vine until he's gotten all he can reach.

The deer at North Bend are privileged. They know no one will turn a weapon against them. And privileged are we, to see them doing deer things out in the broad daylight.

This sweet fawn shared the picnic area with us today for our last lunch together. Even at its tender age, it seemed to know that it had nothing to fear from us. It didn't lie down, ears flat against its neck, pasted to the ground like other fawns I've seen. It listened and looked, sighed and even got up and stretched, waiting patiently for its mama to come back.

It was the sweetest farewell from a place I have grown to love well. 

Wild Places: Best When Shared

Just back this afternoon from a wild and wooly Fri-Sat-Sun, entertaining 34 hearty and kind Bird Watcher's Digest subscribers at our fifth, and perhaps most successful, BWD Reader Rendezvous. 

They were wonderful people, appreciative and soulful, and North Bend showed her best side. 

We worked our buns off making sure everybody got what they'd come for. Bill, Wendy, Dawn, Kyle,  Mollee, Keith and I never once rested, except when we fell into bed for the too-short nights before the 5:30 wakeups. But it was worth every bit of effort. There were a bunch of people there for whom this was the first birding event of any kind they'd ever attended.

We felt the responsibility of making sure it would be the best, too.

It was magic. We were humbled that 34 BWD subscribers would travel--some from as far as Washington State, Florida, Michigan and Georgia--to be with us at this heavenly place Bill and I discovered in 2009, that has become so important to me as a place I can go to soak up some of my favorite birds on its still waters. 

 Ann drove from Florida by herself just to be with us. Keith came from Fayetteville WV, where he helps run the New River Birding and Nature Festival each year, just to help us pull off this event. And he took Ann for a dreamy ride amongst the snags and nesting birds. Friends. What would we do without them?

A female eastern bluebird at her natural house

soon followed by her gorgeous mate.

This was my earliest visit in June since 2009, and hordes of tree swallows are finishing off their broods.

This satiny tree swallow embellished its nest with a great blue heron feather. Its young were well-feathered and soon to boot out of their low snaggy cradle.

Everywhere were eastern kingbirds, nesting out in the open, conspicuous and fearless.

A kingbird hauls a fecal sac from its three babies in their open snag cradle. 

A summer tanager sings his lazy, halting song, back to us. He don't care.

Common bluets dip and couple on the quiet waters, the males clasping their mates behind the head in an oddly beautiful ballet. 

And everywhere around, the stars of the show brought gasps of delight from our rendezvousing readers.

 Taken this morning--a red-headed woodpecker feeds a soon-to-fledge youngster, as a tree swallow buzzes by in this precious watery nursery for cavity-nesting birds.

I floated right up to this bird, busy processing a large insect in one of its many larders.

I think every one of us realized how lucky we were to be here, seeing these things. Tracking down a black-and-white warbler at the hemlock-sheltered picnic area. 

It was an honor to share one of my favorite places with so many good souls. 

Little Green Herons and Bucks in Velvet

Every day I take a few hours to be good to my spirit. Sometimes I take a whole day. July 25 was just such a day. It was to be beautiful. And my friend David, who with his wife Mary Jane turned me onto North Bend State Park in Harrisville, WV, emailed me around 11 pm on the 24th to ask if I wanted to meet them there in the morning. Oh, there's nothing I'd rather do than float around with you two sharp-eyed, attuned naturalists and dear friends!

But my car was in the shop for a mysterious Subaru gas tank weirdness! I fussed about that for awhile, then asked to borrow Bill's van. So the next morning he stuffed my canoe into the van and I rode into town with him, dropped him at Bird Watcher's Digest, and headed to the lake.

The red-headed woodpeckers were calling, churring and kwirking, as I got out of the car at the boat launch. Two, teed up on a snag where I parked. Three more whirling around on the lake. A couple of newly fledged youngun's begging.  It was cool and sunny with puffy white summer clouds. I was so glad to be there.

Little did I know that it was to be Green Heron Day at North Bend State Park. A veritable Festival of Green Herons. Now, I've been there lots of times, and the most I've ever gotten is a few rotten looks at a supershy green heron flying away. Today would be a whole 'nother thing. 

I couldn't tell until I uploaded this photo that this is a newly fledged youngun. See the white down on its crown, and the pale feather edgings on its wing coverts? 

This is another young bird, stepping carefully along a submerged log. It has just a trace of down on the crown, but mostly the heavily streaked sideneck, the pale edgings on wing coverts, and the greenish (not bright orange-yellow) legs give it away.  There are many such floating logs at North Bend. They're the remains of the standing timber that houses the red-headed woodpeckers. It's falling, falling...and the place is changing right before my eyes.

Green herons are shape-shifters, going from football

to croquet mallet in the wink of a hard yellow eye.

Not only that, they have some fabulous James Brown hair when they're excited.



This is the bird my Iowa-born father called a shitepoke. If you don't know the derivation of that word, you may benefit by my having wondered about it for 50 years, and finally having figured it out. Read "How Do You Spell Shitepoke?" 

Well, that was a bit of hyperbole. I probably started wondering about it when I was six. But still. I was delighted to see these young green herons stepping carefully through the shallows of North Bend. It seemed to me a change for the better. This little heron isn't doing so well throughout its range, and it was a balm to see them enjoying some breeding success at my happy place. More green herons in a subsequent post!

I always enjoy stalking deer from the water, and today was Bucks in Velvet day. Everybody got a free bobblehead buck in velvet.



They are curious about a person in a small silent watercraft, but they aren't alarmed, and we spend a great deal of time just looking at each other.



For someone who's going to get so bold and raunchy when the rut comes around in about two months, it amuses me to see him acting like a shy first-grader with his tender just-forking antlers.



We play hide-and-seek, me paddling hard a few times, then drifting silently closer; he playing fan dancer in the trunks and leaves.

If canoeing North Bend with me sounds like something you'd like to do, there are still some spaces left in the Bird Watcher's Digest Reader Rendezvous coming up August 22-24, 2014.

Check it out here: Birding Valhalla With Julie Zickefoose